by Philip on April 6, 2007
I picked up a couple of blogs in my RSS reader over the last two weeks: Frank Schilling’s Seven Mile and Rick Schwartz’s blog.
For those of you who don’t know who those two gentlemen are, they are two of the biggest names in the business of domaining. Frank’s portfolio of domains is worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars (and he only got into the game in 2000) and Rick Schwartz is the guy behind T.R.A.F.F.I.C., one of the biggest conferences on domaining (like what SES Strategies or PubCon are like to SEOs and webmasters).
It’s interesting what we can pick up from some of their thoughts in terms of choosing a domain name. A generic domain name like CubicZirconia.com or CellPhones.com can bring in thousands of pre-qualified customers 24/7. That’s why CellPhones.com was sold a couple of years ago for something in the neighborhood of $3.6 million. Every day, people would bypass search engines and type directly into the address bar of the browser “cellphones.com” to look for cell phones. Then they would click on PPC ads which paid the owner $1,900 a day.
Here’s an article from Business 2.0 that examines the world of domaining and is a fascinating read. What were you doing in 1995? In 2000?
by Philip on April 3, 2007
What is community-driven blog promotion:
Community-driven blog promotion is the term I use for describing any technique a blogger uses to promote his or her blog and that involves getting a blog’s readers to do something that will result in greater exposure for that blog. This definition includes review-for-linkback schemes, memes, contests, etc.
Community-driven blog promotions I’ve participated in:
- I Help You Blog’s free linkback for making a post based on the list of 101 Great Blogging Ideas list.
- Chris Garret’s free linkback for a review of his excellent ebook, “Killer Flagship Content.” Chris is quite clever here–he gets a linkback from the review blog but then also requires his visitors to subscribe to his RSS feed in order to download his ebook! [Here is my review of Killer Flagship Content.]
- Daily Blog Tips’ “Blogging Mistakes” community project. In this case, each person who participates writes a post about learning from a blogging mistake and then links to everyone else who participated. [Here is my blogging mistakes post.]
- Dosh Dosh’s “The Feed Count Meme: Studying the Impact of Feed Count on Blog Feed Subscriptions.” A meme is a question that is posted on one blog and responded to by others on their own blogs. [Here is my response to Dosh Dosh's feed count meme.]
Other community-driven blog promotions I’ve come across:
- John Chow’s free linkback for a review of his blog, John-Chow-dot-com.
- Existential Venture’s “My Blog Log Giveaway Contest” where he gives anyone who joins his MyBlogLog community a chance to win a Canon printer.
- Problogger’s community writing projects that are featured from time-to-time.
- Quasi-Fictional View’s “Fine Art of Blogging” series where he asks bloggers to answer his question, “What is a blog to you?” The idea here is to hopefully get linkbacks and exposure from the bloggers he features.
How to use community-driven blog promotion for your blog:
The best community-driven blog promotion techniques offer something of value to everyone involved. My linkback for a Great Post encourages bloggers to write great posts. Similarly, Daily Blog Tips’ and Problogger’s writing projects encourages bloggers to write great articles on group topics. But before one can ask others to promote their blog, the blogger has to have a blog worth promoting. New blogs should have excellent content already up. While pure monetary bribes may work with some, most bloggers won’t bite.
Besides just initiating community-driven blog promotion for your blog, there are also benefits to actually participating in the promotions of others. Participating in various promotions gets your name out and noticed. Moreover, participating usually involves creating great content for your site.
by Philip on April 1, 2007
Collis from NorthxEast asks, “Is it more important to post really, really regularly OR to put together more on-topic posts less regularly?”
My response is the two options shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. I don’t think any blogger should post anything that is not on-topic to the blog. Doing so is a waste of everyone’s time. People read the blog because of the topic advertised and posting off-topic is like inviting someone to come over for a Halloween party then proceeding to make the party a very formal dinner instead. Imagine the shock someone gets when she walks in the door in a witch’s costume only to be directed to the dining room where everyone is dressed formally.
On the other hand, rushing a posting when the thought is only half-baked is equally damaging to your blog’s reputation and quality. All posts should be well thought out before being posted. If you have a new blog and your posts are half-baked, your blog will quickly be dismissed as irrelevant by the more established blogs and readers. Without their support, you can forget about ever being heard or well read.
One of the things I’ve realized since starting this blog and attracting so many subscribers quickly is how much time I have to dedicate to writing really useful posts so my readers won’t be disappointed and unsubscribe. Unfortunately, the ingredients for great posts take a lot of time to marinate and cook before the truly great post is produced.
As you know, I don’t blog for a living. Unfortunately, the demands of my day job means that sometimes I can’t blog on a daily basis. Instead of just posting for the sake of posting, I’ve decided so far to post only when I’ve fully “baked” the idea.
In summary, you have to post regularly or else you will lose readers but posting off-topic regularly or posting incomplete thoughts are even worse evils.
[If you have a question you like answered, email me at ihelpyoublog /at/ gmail /dot/ com.]
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